LiveSide - News blog : Windows Live Profile

New Feed And Contact Partners Coming To Windows Live

Sunshine — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:00:00 GMT

This week 23 new third-party feed partners, including Blingee, BuddyTV, Goodreads, Hulu, Judy’s Book, MySpace, Newsvine, OleOle, Qik and SlideShare are rolling out in Windows Live (full list available here).

Adding feeds to your Windows Live Profile is easy. Click “Add Web activities” on the left side of your Windows Live Profile page, and select the partner sites you’d like to add. After following the steps, your activities on those sites will appear in the news feed of your Windows Live profile and throughout Windows Live.

But not only are more feed partners coming to Windows Live, there will also be new contact partners. Contact partners? Yes, contact partners. Contact partners are sites with which you can share/invite contacts back and forth. Just as you can already invite friends (contacts) from Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace to Windows Live, you will now also be able to invite friends from AOL, Google and Hyves!

To invite people go to your Windows Live homepage at http://www.home.live.com and click “Add people”

Next select from which network you’d like to invite friends, click the arrow and follow steps. Done!

Windows Live Blog - Windows Live adds to its list of third-party partners ...

Tips for adding Facebook Web Activity on your Windows Live Profile

damaster — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:44:00 GMT

Windows Live Profile was just recently updated with the ability to add 20 new Web Activities, and one of which includes Facebook. Like many people (including readers on LiveSide and Windows Live Wire’s team blog), I have had problems getting my Facebook updates on to my Windows Live Profile (Note: NOT Windows Live Home, see later). It seems like there’s a few things you need to set on Facebook’s end to get it working. Here’s Windows Live team’s response when we enquired about why it wasn’t working the first time we tried it:

The types of Facebook updates that you should be seeing on your Windows Live Profile are: Status message, Photos, Videos, Links, and Notes (but not comments about those items).

If you’re still not seeing these updates, one other thing to check is your privacy settings on Facebook. If you use the default settings for status updates, “Everyone” (or “My Networks and Friends” for Status and Links ONLY), then you should be fine. If you’ve changed these to more restrictive settings, then updates will not come over to Windows Live.

What this means is that besides adding the Facebook web activity, you will also need to configure your Facebook privacy settings such that it can be fed to your Windows Live Profile. But for those who knows a bit about Facebook will realise that there’s hundreds of privacy settings across Facebook, so which one will you need to change? We at LiveSide have gone through the trouble and will show you where exactly to change your privacy settings so that it’ll show up on your Windows Live Profile. So here it is:

To share your Facebook Status or Links on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=profile
Look for “Status and Links” and set that to either “My Networks and Friends” or “Everyone”
Notice that your Facebook Profile privacy settings can remain restricted to “Only Friends”
Update your Facebook Status message or post a Link
It should now show up on your own Windows Live Profile (and also your Windows Live friend’s What’s New feeds if you’ve allowed them to see it)

To share your Facebook Photos on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=photos
Select the album you’re like to share with Windows Live, and set the privacy settings to “Everyone”. Alternatively, you can create a new album and set its privacy settings to “Everyone”
Upload your photos to the album you just created or edited in Step 2
The photos you just uploaded to Facebook should now appear on your own Windows Live Profile (and your friend’s Windows Live Photos)

To share your Facebook Videos on Windows Live Profile

When uploading your Video to Facebook, you’ll be able to set the privacy settings for that particular video. Make sure you set it to “Everyone”
When the video has been uploaded to Facebook, it should also now appear on your own Windows Live Profile

To share your Facebook Notes on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=notes
Under “Who can see your Notes?” make sure you set it to “Everyone”
Create a new Note on Facebook
When publishing your note, double check and make sure you set the privacy setting for that particular Note to “Everyone” (it should be the default if you’ve done Step 1 and 2)
The Note you just posted should now show up on your Windows Live Profile

The Windows Live team also wrote the following in response to many users expecting to see their Facebook news feeds (or even wall posts) to show up on their Windows Live Home:

Once you add the Facebook web activity, your updates won’t appear to you on Windows Live Home, just on your Profile (and on the Home pages of people in your network on Windows Live). This is because the Facebook web activity pulls over updates about things you have done, but nothing about what your Facebook friends have done, unless they’re also Windows Live friends, and they’ve also added the Facebook web activity. You can invite all of your Facebook friends (or just the ones you want) to join your network on Windows Live by going to http://profile.live.com/connect.

Oh and also note that there might be a slight delay between when you update your Facebook and when the activity will appear on your Windows Live Profile. And for those wondering, we do believe that you shouldn’t have to share your Facebook Photos and Videos with the public to get it appearing on Windows Live (particularly if you’re restricting the Facebook Web Activity to be shown your friends only on Windows Live), it completely makes no sense to us. However, we understand that this is a limitation on Facebook’s side and Microsoft is in the talks with Facebook to work out if a solution is possible. Let’s all hope that this will be changed soon in the future!

Nevertheless, hope this clears up some confusion and solves some of your problems with the Facebook Web Activity!

Windows Live Profile (April) update is here!

damaster — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:39:41 GMT

As announced one week ago, the newly updated Windows Live Profile has been rolled out to all users now! A summary of all the changes that were part of this update include:

20 new Web Activities, including Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug and many more totalling 30 Web Activities you can add to your Profile. You can find the whole list at http://profile.live.com/WebActivities
3 new ways to add people to your Windows Live network, including importing contacts from Hi5, MySpace, and Tagged, in addition to the existing Facebook and LinkedIn contacts you may import from. You can start connecting with your friends on other networks using Windows Live at http://profile.live.com/connect
Contact search word-wheel, improved results when you’re searching for people on Windows Live from the Windows Live Home or Profile pages, as reported earlier
Photos Tagged of You, you’re now able to view all the photos that have been People Tagged of you, or your friends, on Windows Live Photos on a single page linked on your Profile
A new Windows Live Profile favicon

For more information check out Windows Live’s official announcement. You can try it out (if you haven’t done so already) at http://profile.live.com

Coming Next Week: New Web Activities And Contact Importing From MySpace, Hi5 And Tagged

Sunshine — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:24:37 GMT

Yes, we’ve been waiting for this! In the next few days, 20 new feed partners will be added to Windows Live, so you can add all your activities on for example Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug, and Fotolog to your profile. Every time you do something on those sites it will turn up on your profile, and of course in your friend’s “What’s New” feed. These new additions bring the grand total of third-party content partners to more than 30!

Feed Partners:

Daum, flickr, Flixter, iLike, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, Twitter, WordPress, Yelp

New feed partners:

Live Journal, OverBlog, Typepad, Dailymotion, Last.fm, Zune Social, Bilddagboken.se, Fotolog, SmugMug, MSN, Digg, Arto, Dada, FaceBook, Hevre, Hyves, MClub (GMedia), MetroFLOG, Yandex, Zoo.gr

But that’s not all that is coming! Soon, MySpace, Hi5, and Tagged will join Facebook and LinkedIn as sites that let you invite your friends to Windows Live (and vice versa).

All of these updates and more (as soon as we find out what the “more” is we’ll post it here on LiveSide) will go live in the next week! I can’t wait.

In the meantime you can read this QnA with Brian Hall: Windows Live: Power Through Simplicity or watch the videos about how to add web activities and inviting friends in Rob Dolin’s post on windowslivewire.

Edit: oops, forgot Twitter. Thanks CalumJR

CTIA Keynote Preview

RyanRCRea — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 04:04:52 GMT

On April 2…. yes April 2nd ,Robert Bach will take to the stage and make the day 2 keynote at CTIA’s 2009 trade show.

He is president of the Entertainment & Devices, a group that includes Zune & Windows Mobile. You can expect the usual dog & pony show for Windows Mobile 6.5 and its upcoming app store.

According to sources close to MS, You can expect at least one surprise announcement related to Windows Live wave 4. Which is due this fall

The announcement may be the long rumored Windows Live-Facebook integration. Which would allow users to link both networks together and view Facebook’s updates on www.home.live.com.

It would seem Microsoft is very intent on making Windows Live a one stop social gateway. With the ability to view Tweets from Twitter & now with the addition of Facebook updates, You have a very well rounded social experience.

Keep a close eye on the keynote.. you’ll be glad you did.

An explanation about your Windows Live “Network”

damaster — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:53:13 GMT

Jamie over at his blog had posted a very nice entry explaining the differences between Spaces friends, Messenger buddies, and Hotmail contacts. Since the launch of the new Wave 3 Windows Live Web services with all these newly introduced concepts like People, Profiles, and your Network, you might have been asking some of the following questions (I know I have):

What's the difference between People in my Network and People on my Profile?
Are Spaces friends part of my Network?
Can someone be a Messenger buddy without being part of my Network or on my Profile?

The answer lies in the following diagram, kindly provided by one of the developers on the Windows Live team (we’ve beefed it up a little with Office 2007):

Note that the three categories: People on your Profile, Messenger contacts, and Hotmail address book contacts are not mutually exclusive. Here’s the diagram we came up with showing their relationships:

Hope this clears up some of the confusion about this whole new “Network” concept and gives you a clearer overview of how your contacts are organised in your Windows Live People page. And just a note, the existing People page does not take this whole “Network” concept to the full extent, however, with the next release of Hotmail (coming mid-December), we expect that the People page will also be changed to incorporate these new “Network” concepts. See our Windows Live People review for what the updated People page will look like.

Windows Live Profile - introducing your Web Activities, Networks and Lists

damaster — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:52:00 GMT

One of the new services as part of the Windows Live Wave 3 launch is Windows Live Profile. To put it simply, Profile is the place to display information about yourself to others - as opposed to Windows Live Home that delivers information about other users straight to you. You are able to choose exactly what information you'd want to display, and which contacts you want to access your Profile information.

Windows Live Profile aggregates the following information, all into one place for your convenience:

• About Me - personal and social details about yourself, such as your birthday, hometown, interests, hobbies...etc.

• Lists of favorite things - this is the "lists" originally part of Spaces, now moved into your Profile, showing your favorite movies, music, books and any other custom lists you would like to share.

• Network - this is the "friends" that was originally part of Spaces too, showing your circle of friends and allowing others connect to your "Network", or even introduce new friends to you and vice versa. This integrates tightly with Windows Live People - where you are able to manage your contacts and Networks. (Note that contacts can be in your People's address book but not part of your Network, but those whom you added on Messenger are automatically added to your Network now)

• Notes - you might've noticed the text "Post a Note" in Messenger's What's New feed, this allow other users to comment on your recent activities that appears on your Profile and What's New feed, if you allow them to do so.

• Private messages - as opposed to Notes which is available for others to see, private messages are, as the name speaks for itself, private. You're able to send short private messages to each other in Profile quickly, instead of having to send emails

• What's New feed - this is the place that display all your recent activities, on any of the Windows Live services, or on any other third-party services (called Web Activities), all in one place. You may choose what you'd like to display, and who you'd want to share these information with. Examples of what might appear here include what you've recently uploaded onto SkyDrive and Photos, which Network you've joined recently, what personal status message or display picture you've updated on Messenger, what blog posts on Spaces or any Notes you've posted recently, and also updates from any of the Web Activities you've added.

• Web Activities - Microsoft has partnered with over 50 companies for this (more details on this later), allowing you to display information about yourself on any of these third-party services, including Twitter, Yelp, iLike, WordPress, Flickr and many more. For example, any updates to your Twitter feed, any new blog updates from your WordPress-powered blog, any updates to your Flickr photos, or any new items you've added on iLike will appear in your What's New feed when you've added the Web Activities for these services respectively on your Profile.

Since its separation from Spaces, Windows Live Profile has become one of the most prominent services in the Wave 3 release. Profile takes your privacy seriously and users are able to configure almost everything that is to be displayed on their Profile. It facilitates the backend of your entire integrated social profile while introducing a new way to keep your contacts updated about yourself. Very nicely done!

Thanks to Picturepan2 for the heads up for this!

Windows Live Wave 3 beta urls show up

Chris — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:38:11 GMT

A couple of weeks ago we started noticing an interesting referrer popping up in the stats for some of our posts. Turns out Microsoft moved their Wave 3 services from the dogfood servers onto beta servers, and as a result some MSFT employees were clicking through to us from http://home-beta.live.com. You won’t be able to sign in to any of the beta sites yet if you’re not on the approved list (the betas haven’t started yet if you’re worried), but here’s a few gems we learnt while digging around.

Note – as the new sites are locked down, these are just features we’ve spotted/inferred from looking around the existing sites that are running side-by-side. What’s great is that now new features can be tested before being rolled out to the general public, something which Spaces has needed ever since one of its updates rendered the service unusable for several weeks.

Windows Live Home Beta (http://home-beta.live.com) – As mentioned above, softies are clicking through to us from this site, thanks to the new homepage having default groups of feeds that users can subscribe to. Looks like this new homepage could have similar features to my.live.com, so it’ll be interesting to see how much functionality they duplicate.

Windows Live Profile Beta (http://profile-beta.live.com) – Sorry Jason and Sabina but you’re our demos (everybody else had personal photos up). You can see from these feeds that photo albums are now stored on Skydrive. That means you can now use your Skydrive storage across multiple services, which should please a lot of people.

Windows Live Photos Beta (http://photos-beta.live.com) – The front-end user interface to the photos stored on Skydrive, see below. This means you now start to share your 5GB of storage across Windows Live services, which hopefully is a sign of further consolidation in the storage area. Lets face it, we have too much scattered storage already (about 30GB worth!)

Windows Live Skydrive Beta (http://skydrive-beta.live.com) – With photos going to be stored on Skydrive, there’s more privacy options you can set, as shown by the new icon below. This means photos won’t necessarily be visible to the public, giving users some control over content that’s currently lacking in the existing Spaces photo albums.

And for completeness, the urls of the other beta sites:

Windows Live Groups Beta (http://groups-beta.live.com), Windows Live Spaces Beta (http://spaces-beta.live.com) and Windows Live Events Beta (http://events-beta.live.com)

Let us know if you find anything: tips [at] liveside d0t net

Wave 3 urls start resolving, services betas coming soon

Chris — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:41:00 GMT

Ah its almost that time of the year, when we start posting 5 times a day with more screenshots than you can shake a stick at. Just to wet the appetite, the url for the Windows Live People service now works (people.live.com). Unfortunately if you’re not on the Hotmail dogfood servers, all you’ll see is your Hotmail inbox. Yes there is a Wave 3 Hotmail update, which should please a lot of people :)

Also of note is that profile.live.com now redirects to Spaces (photos.live.com has done for a few releases now).

One final point to make, is that if you signed into Windows Live Video Messages to try it out, you’ll have broken your Windows Live Calendar. If you try and sign in now, you’ll see an error message: “Windows Live Calendar wasn’t able to complete this request.” We’ve heard that it is a known issue, so it should get fixed in the near future. Maybe at the same time as a Wave 3 calendar update? ;)

Anyway, if you have any tips over the next month or so remember we have a dedicated tips line: tips [at] liveside dot net.

Fun times ahead!